Rescue teams in Nepal are using explosives to break through mountainsides and reach hundreds of hydropower workers believed to be trapped inside mud-filled tunnels. Nepalese and Chinese military personnel are leading the international rescue effort, with experts from India, South Korea and Australia also involved. Rescuers have been pumping air into the tunnels in an effort to keep conditions survivable for those who may still be inside.
Army personnel have begun using explosives to blast through hillsides and large rocks blocking access to the tunnel networks. Australian tunnelling expert Arnold Dix, who has been assisting the operation remotely, described the scale of the destruction as extraordinary.
Dix said the rescuers have faced major difficulties locating the tunnels because the landscape has been dramatically altered. Once the locations of the power stations are established, teams must determine how best to reach them, often by digging and blasting through huge boulders.
A rescue team managed to enter one tunnel leading to a hydropower plant on Monday but withdrew after finding no workers inside. Authorities have nevertheless continued efforts to reach other sections of the tunnel network.
Prime Minister Balendra Shah said Monday that 279 people had been rescued from the affected hydropower sites and that rescue operations had been intensified. Families of missing workers are anxiously awaiting news as the search continues.
Anushila Bhandari, whose 33-year-old engineer husband Aurus Bhandari is missing from a project site, told BBC Nepali that she hoped he would be found and return home. Another family member, Sita Pandey, said she still believed her husband could be alive because an oxygen system was installed inside the plant.
Nepal’s hydropower sector has been particularly affected because numerous projects are located along the country’s mountainous river systems. Authorities said at least 11 completed or under-construction hydropower projects were damaged in the disaster.
Families have expressed frustration over the pace of the rescue operation, with some saying air should have been pumped into the tunnels earlier. Jiban Khadka, whose relative is believed to be trapped inside a plant, said every second was important as the search continued.
Priya Kharel, whose brother Milan was working as an engineer at the Upper Trishuli-1 plant, said people who escaped the hydropower site had reported that workers were still inside the tunnels, giving families hope that they could be rescued if teams reached them quickly.
The rescue effort is being complicated by the scale of the destruction. Dix said some boulders blocking access routes were larger than houses, while the original locations and entrances of some tunnels have become difficult to identify.
The floods have caused a major humanitarian emergency in Nepal, with the death toll exceeding 1,000 and thousands of people still unaccounted for. The disaster has also inflicted extensive damage on infrastructure in the Himalayan region.
